Co-owners and bartenders Pedro Tobar and Daniel Gonzalez have come up with holiday cocktails that fit into their nostalgia-themed menu, combining all of the owners’ cultural backgrounds into two delicious drinks. The Tres Triste Tigres is based on three milk-based drinks from the Dominican Republic (morrir soñando), Taiwan (milk tea), and El Salvador (cevada fresco). The creamy drink combines dark rum, cevada (barley horchata), spiced barley tea, orange jam, and three different milks: whole milk, condensed milk, and coconut milk. The Atole en Invierno is inspired by Latin American atole (a traditional Mesoamerican drink), mixing dark rum, cashews, Amaro Averna, vanilla, cinnamon, and green cardamom.

Officials in D.C. broke ground on an $18 million project to expand the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center in Ward 8 on Wednesday.

The expansion will allow the center, which is located on Mississippi Avenue near Oxon Run Park, to go from 12 to 19 tennis courts and from one to five pickleball courts.

The new facilities will help grow services for D.C. residents. Delano Hunter, director of D.C.’s Department of General Services, said he hopes it will bring more junior tennis tournaments to the city.

“We’re introducing the sport of tennis to a new generation of District residents in this project,” Hunter said. “We can’t wait for the next maybe Francis Tiafoe to play, learn and be developed at the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center.”

Once the expansion is complete, the center will have three new indoor tennis hard courts with spectator seating, locker rooms and multi-purpose rooms.

New outdoor facilities will include four tennis courts, four pickleball courts and a pedestrian bridge. A new plaza and an expanded parking lot will also be included, D.C. officials said in a news release.

Ryan Battaglia, who trains at the center, said this project will help the D.C. community.

“The more tennis opportunities there are in the D.C. area is just going to be a great help for any community, especially this community,” Battaglia said. “Tennis is one of those sports where it kind of brings communities together.”

Andrew Moore, 13, is among the many kids who love to play tennis at the center. It also helps that he lives a walking distance from the facility.

“This is competitive for me. I want to take it top level, top tier,” Moore said. “Just the passion for the sport has just driven me to take it top level.”

The expansion project on the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center is expected to be finished in 2026.

WTOP’s Mike Murillo contributed to this story.

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The body found encased in concrete inside a refrigerator at a Northeast D.C. apartment building has been identified as a 44-year-old woman and housing advocate.

Chandra Brown was remembered as a talented writer and poet.

“That’s my baby. My baby’s gone,” said Sheila Brown, the mother of Chandra Brown.

She was overwhelmed by emotion as she spoke about her daughter.

“She was the kid that made me the mother that I am,” she said.

Sheila Brown described her daughter as a spark of light who, as a young child, showed a talent for writing and poetry, which became a lifelong passion.

“There’s books of her work that is all around the United States that we don’t have access to that brilliant writing,” she said.

Chandra Brown graduated from Dunbar High School in the District, trained as a nurse assistant and had three children. But things began to get difficult for her, and within a few years, her children went to live with family in North Carolina, and Chandra began living unhoused in the District.

“Part of where she ended up where she was was she always wanted to help the homeless people,” Sheila Brown said. “She felt there was something that drew her to them. I’m not sure what turned in her life.”

She believes it was her daughter’s compassion that led to a moment in 2021 captured by TV cameras and memorialized in a tweet at the dedication of a new park in Franklin Square downtown, where there had formerly been a homeless encampment.

Chandra Brown stood up and gave the middle finger to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. In an interview that day with the publication Street Sense, she expressed frustration with the mayor’s administration.

Chandra Brown’s path to 4300 Brook St. NE where her body was found Oct. 18 is not clear. Neighbors told News4 the refrigerator that held her remains, which were encased in concrete, came from a third floor apartment in the mostly empty building. Workers found the refrigerator in a dumpster being used to hold construction debris.

Sheila Brown, who lives in North Carolina, says she and her daughter spoke by phone regularly until May of 2023, then nothing.

The exact cause of Brown’s death has yet to be determined by the D.C. Medical Examiner.